


this is a torch song (touch me and you'll burn)

by Ryaninthesky



Category: Supergirl (TV 2015)
Genre: Enemies to Lovers, F/F, I'm such a sucker for this trope, Lena pretends to date Kara to bring down supergirl but oops falls in love with her of course, evil!Lena
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-07-23
Updated: 2017-07-23
Packaged: 2018-12-06 01:15:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,300
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11589996
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ryaninthesky/pseuds/Ryaninthesky
Summary: Lena Luther is good. She is kind and sweet and a great friend and not at all like the rest of her family, and Kara will go to her grave defending her.But what if she weren’t?Lena has been a member of Cadmus since long before she came to National City. In fact, she has a very specific goal in mind when she decides to leave Metropolis: Destroy Supergirl.





	this is a torch song (touch me and you'll burn)

**Author's Note:**

> The title is from Margaret Atwood's excellent poem 'Helen of Troy Does Countertop Dancing'

Lena is sure that Kara Danvers is Supergirl by the second time she meets her. She’s almost disappointed; Lex got the original, the Superman, the epic classical struggle, and she got, what? A golden-haired puppy of an alien whose idea of a disguise is glasses and a pony tail. Honestly, she’s so taken aback when Kara claims that she _flew_ to her office on a _bus_ that for a few seconds she doubts herself. Maybe it is just a coincidence. Maybe somehow Supergirl is on to her and has sent a decoy. Maybe Kara is harboring strange delusions of Kryptonian grandeur. It wouldn’t be the first time some well-meaning but mentally unstable human had claimed to be a superhero, after all. It’s just that they have an unfortunate habit of going splat in the Cadmus laboratory and Kara has such a nice, kind smile that Lena would actually regret having to take her in, if that turned out to be the case.

But then she invites Kara and her idiot friend Mike to that awful gala - honestly, she could have taken out those two-bit thugs with her hands behind her back even if her mother hadn’t warned her. Who did they think she _was?_ \- and it’s very, very clear that Kara and Supergirl are one and the same even if she hadn’t been intercepting their coms from the moment they stepped into the venue.

Which, as she’d mentioned, is a bit of a let down. She’d been making plans for _months_ , going over various ways to bring Supergirl out of hiding, planning intricate death threats to herself, and the Kryptonian just _walks into her office_ after the very first one.

Well. Ninety percent of the reason she’d had flowers she’d sent over to Kara’s office had been to cement their budding friendship, but the remaining ten percent that had pushed the order from ‘acceptable congratulations’ to ‘possible health hazard’ had been from something approaching righteous indignation.

She’s never actually been around a Super before. While her brother had been off fighting to save mankind, she’d been at MIT, and then working at LutherCorp, in the very necessary but very boring role of networking; with politicians, with investors, with CEOs. They were very often old, rich, men. She was young, beautiful, and female; she did very well. After all, it was what she’d been training for since the day Lex had shown them just how dangerous the aliens living among them could be.

She might not have super strength, or heat vision, or be able to fly, but she could read a room like a chess board, move a knight with a whispered word, place a pawn with a heated glance, capture a queen with a promise in her flashing green eyes. Lex was the genius and Lilian was the schemer and Lionel was the robber baron but it was always Lena who got things done, Lena with the light touch and the siren’s smile, who stole and stole and never got caught.

And if Kara Danvers isn’t exactly the mystery she’d been anticipating, there’s still something, well, intriguing about her. She’s finally seen first-hand what a superhero can do, and the idea of all that power calls to something deep inside her, a place where hairy, nearly-upright apes huddle in front of piles of burning sticks and lift their eyes to the heavens. It is fear and desire together, leaping like flames, pulsing like stars.

It is at this moment that she _knows_ that what Cadmus is doing is right, because there is no way that that kind of power can be left unchecked.  

Lena waits two days after the gala before she calls Kara again.

“Kara?” She lets her voice melt into something soft and warm. “I’m glad I caught you.” A pause. “No, nothing important. I wanted to see if you’d like to go to dinner tonight? I’m afraid I wasn’t a very good host the other night; I’d like to make it up to you...great! I’ll pick you up at seven? Oh...okay. If you’re sure. Sydney’s on 52nd street. See you then.”

For a moment she stares at her phone, the feeling that this is almost too easy washing over her again, but she shakes her head a little and presses a button on the intercom. No sense looking for monsters under the bed when she’ll be meeting one for dinner.

“Jess? Please bring me the updated contract for the Wayne account.” The fate of the world may be at stake but she doubts her stockholders would appreciate the gravity of the situation. She needs focus and finish up here at the office; she’ll be working late tonight.

 

* * *

 

“Kara! I am so, so sorry I’m late.” Lena rushed into the restaurant like a whirlwind, barely waiting for the waiter to pull out her chair before sitting down.

The thing was, Lena hadn’t actually _meant_ to be late. It was just...somehow she’d ended up barefoot in her bathroom wondering whether she should wear her hair up (accentuating the lines of her neck, but perhaps _too_ formal?) or down (approachable, vulnerable). Which was _ridiculous._ She refused to be intimidated by someone who wore _cardigans_ , no matter what kind of superhuman powers they may have.

She left her hair up.

“No, no problem.” Kara waved off Lena’s apology. “It’s was only a couple of minutes.”

“Still.” Lena smiled teasingly. “You must be hungry.”

“I…” Her stomach grumbled and Kara smiled sheepishly. “I skipped lunch?”

“Hmm.” Lena flicked her eyes up and down Kara’s torso. The reporter was still in her work clothes; perhaps a little dressed down for Sydney’s, but who was going to question a Luthor or her guest? No one, that’s who. They valued their livelihoods (and lives) too much. “Perhaps I should have chosen a place with potstickers?”

“You saw that?”

“It was truly impressive.”

Kara pushed back in her chair, clearly trying not to pout but also as clearly totally failing at it. “Guys with alien weapons try to rob the place but somehow all anyone remembers are my eating habits.”

“Perhaps you should take that as a compliment?”

“Right. The ability to it five potstickers in my mouth at once is _so_ attractive.”

Lena ran the tip of one finger thoughtfully over the sweating condensation on her water-glass, eyes dancing with mirth. “Maybe you’re just not looking in the right circles?”

Kara stared, blushed, and stammered out a scandalized “ _Lena!”_ but the woman in question just laughed, tilting her head to catch their waiter’s eye. She appreciated Sydney’s for many things. Their _Blanquette de Veau_ , for one, but also for the attentive and discrete nature of their staff. Very few people appreciated the power of money like a waiter. They were almost always available for...extracurricular activities, and several of them had surprising skills. Lena Luthor rules of management number six: Always, always treat the help well. It was almost pathetic, how far you could get with a few kind words and a reputation as a good tipper.

“Peter! How are you doing? I thought the doctor told you to stay off your feet for awhile?”

The waiter laughed, flipping open his order book. “I’m fine, thank you Miss Luthor. Marie’s still looking for a permanent gig, and you know how it is…”

“Have Marie send her resume over and we’ll see if there’s something she’d be interested in.” She smiled at him, pulling a business card from her purse. “We’re moving a lot of the infrastructure over from Metropolis and I’m up to my ears in paperwork. Now let’s see… I think I’ll have the _boudin noir aux pommes_ , and bring us a bottle of the ‘82 _Chateau Mouton Rothschild._ Kara?”

Kara, who had been studying Lena thoughtfully, suddenly snapped to attention and gripped her menu as if it held the answers to the universe’s most pressing questions. “I...ah.”

“May I suggest the _magret de canard?”_ Lena laid a hand gently on Kara’s forearm, smiling to herself when she felt the muscles tense.

“ _Je voudrais le confit de canard, s’il vous plait.”_ Kara rattled off smoothly, handing her menu to Peter, who took it with a quick bow and disappeared with the air of a practiced waiter.

“Your French is very good.” Lena commented with a raised brow. So. Not completely without depth.

“Thanks!” Kara smiled, wide and bright and clear as the sky. “I took it in high school, but pretty much all I remember is food related. Where did you learn?”

“Oh, years in some very exclusive private schools and a summer tour of Europe.” And a very pretty girl who had taught her some very dirty words, she didn’t say. “Do you speak any other languages?”

Kara Zor-el was fluent in five, and passable in seven others; some human, some not. But Kara Danvers… “Enough Spanish to get by. That’s about it.” The lie closes off that line of questioning pretty effectively, and silence falls uncomfortably between them. Lena is not used to it and doesn’t like it, but she’s so _limited_. Even with all the information Lex had collected on Kyrptonians, even with the background checks she’d run on Kara Danvers, she still knows far too little about the alien sitting in front of her. It feels like playing chess when you can’t see the other person’s pieces, and she’s caught between moves.

In the end, it’s Kara who rescues her from her thoughts.

“So...Lena Luthor, remaking her company and changing her image one person at a time?”

What? Oh. Peter. “It’s not…” She waves away the notion that everything she does is so mercenary, although sometimes even she’s not sure where the line is drawn. “Marie is an excellent administrator. Actually, with the amount of organizing that needs to get done and people to yell at, I’m not sure I’m really doing them a favor.”

“I get it. Totally selfish.”

“Completely.”

Kara can’t keep a straight face after that, and Lena allows herself to be drawn in. It’s...Kara is surprisingly easy to talk to. There is very little that is overtly alien about her, and it’s...nice, for a moment, to pretend that she’s they’re just two friends meeting up after a long day of work. She will let herself enjoy this, she decides. After all, the most effective lies are the ones that are closest to the truth.

Their food comes, and Kara inhales all of her duck and half of Lena’s plate as well, chattering happily about a Mexican place a few blocks over that Lena _absolutely has to try,_ because their _barbacoa_ is to die for and they serve some kind of imported soda? And Lena’s almost a little insulted that she used her influence to get last-minute reservations at Sydney’s when apparently all it takes to impress Supergirl is a disturbingly large number of tacos.

“Would you like a ride home?” They’re waiting outside for Lena’s car, because the summer night is warm and the breeze smells like flowers and Lena knows what she looks like when the lights of the city sparkle in her eyes.

“Oh, uh, no. It’s fine. I’ll catch the bus.”

“Oh? I didn’t realize they came down here this late.” They totally don’t.

“I mean I’ll get an uber.” Kara quickly corrects, and Lena realizes that Kara’s going to fly home. She wonders for the n-th time how half of National City still hasn’t figured out who Supergirl is. Is there something in the water?

She thinks of Kara’s appetite, and wonders how many calories she needs to maintain her body. How her metabolism processes Earth food. She wonders what they will find, when they take Supergirl apart in the labs. Wonders if they will put her back together.

The car pulls up, sleek and black and silent.

“Thank you for joining me tonight, Kara.”

“Thanks for inviting me. It’s a lot more fun than almost getting shot.” Kara grins, but for the first time tonight her expression is closed off and cautious. Lena decides it’s not a look that suits her. “Maybe we could do it again? I’ll take you out next time.”

“I’d like that.” The rush of victory is powerful in Lena’s veins, and she feels flush with it when Kara hugs her goodnight.

 

* * *

 

Lena likes organization. She likes order, and rationality, and has a pintrest board with things like bullet journals and color-coordinated notes and all the things she has absolutely no time to do.

She stays up until nearly midnight recording her dinner with Kara. It’s been a very long day, and the bed is inviting, but she wants to get everything down. Impressions, notes, even what Kara had ordered. She can hear her mother’s voice, cool and smooth as glass as she quizzes Lena about whichever societal function she’d last attended. “Information is power, Helen,"-even by high school only her mother used her full name-"and power is _control_. To control someone else, all you need to do is find out what they want, and give it to them.”

Somewhere in the hurried cursive, she knows the answer is waiting for her. What does Supergirl want? Is it even the same as what Kara Danvers wants? She feels pain blooming at her temples, too much wine and not enough water. She should really take some aspirin and try to sleep, but though it’s late and she’s tired, she can’t help but feel the fate of humanity weighing her down. They have backup plans, she knows, nearly endless ways to halt the alien invasion; some better, some worse. She is not the only one.

But she thinks of her mothers, and the name she both hates and tries to live up to, and she feels very, very alone.

  



End file.
